


gilded

by renquise



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Wizards Being All About The Hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 15:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30074181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: Essek has striking hands. It was one of the first things Caleb noticed about him, after the deft precision of his casting. The long formal gloves that Essek is wearing now are simple and sleek, of a violet as dark and depthless as his magic.Caleb strokes the inside of Essek’s palm, lets his fingers wander to the smooth pearl buttons at his wrist.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 26
Kudos: 133





	gilded

**Author's Note:**

> so i just wanted to indulge in writing about essek in long gloves and uh. ended up with something even more self-indulgent, somehow?

It is late evening by the time Essek returns. Caleb feels his ears pop with the familiar change in air pressure that comes with someone translocating into the small space of their study.

“You’re back earlier than expected.”

Essek removes his traveling cloak, throwing it over the arm of the armchair. He looks tired from the travel, but no more so than he would be at the end of a day of teaching. 

“Ah, that would be because I am very good at what you hired me for. Hello, Caleb.”

“Is that so? How was the meeting with the representatives in Eiselcross?” 

“Mm. I think the outpost will accept two of our students, if they still intend to pursue that research project.”

Underneath his traveling cloak, Essek is in full courtly wear. He is dressed exactingly proper, an image for a diplomatic guide to Kryn dress standards: the exact amount of layers needed to communicate respect for his interlocutor without undue opulence, the filigree chains joined to his earlobe indicating an openness to conversation and negotiation, the long gloves acknowledging the formality of the meeting. Caleb is sure that more that would be evident to a more discerning assessment: he only gained an eye for these details through Essek, and there must be many subtleties more that escape his notice. 

Caleb is dressed in a well-worn robe and a pair of very cozy socks knitted for him by Fjord. He closes his writing desk and sets it aside, along with his glasses. The letters to the Tal'dorei council can wait until tomorrow morning.

“You look very put-together.”

Essek lifts his chin, tilting his profile into the light, and Caleb hides a smile in his hand. Essek has always been good at presenting himself exactly as he wants to appear, and warms Caleb to see him take pride and pleasure in it.

Caleb reaches for his hands, and Essek gives them over. He’s wearing long gloves with pearl closures at the inside of the wrist. The gloves hug his slender fingers beautifully. 

The gloves are meant for conveying distance and formality, from what he now understands. Caleb can still remember the hands of the Bright Queen clad in gloves like glittering gauntlets, raising the beacon overhead. The gloves that Essek wears now are simple and sleek, of a violet as dark and depthless as his magic.

Even in exile, Essek still keeps many of the Kryn customs, and it makes Caleb’s heart glad. They have both lost homes, and anything that can be salvaged from the ashes should be held close.

He squeezes Essek’s hand. 

“Tell me, were you wearing gloves when we first met?” 

“Yes, surely.” Essek looks rueful. “I would have been much more offended when you touched my arm, otherwise.”

Caleb frowns, then pinpoints the moment: his hand on Essek’s arm, his fingers brushing the inside of Essek’s wrist. Essek was wearing gloves then too, his fingertips shimmering blue with the transferred dust of arcane chalk. 

“I did,” Caleb says. “Ah, I apologize in retrospect. That was more inappropriate than I intended.”

Essek ducks his head. “I didn’t mind. Or, I did, and I wished I didn’t, because you were being very inconvenient to my attempts to cover up an ongoing treasonous plot.”

“We were also harrying you to teleport us, if I remember correctly.”

Essek ducks his head with a laugh. “Ah, true.”

“Well, I retroactively apologize for this inappropriate behaviour towards a representative of the Dynasty,” Caleb says, matching Essek’s playfulness.

Essek has striking hands. It was one of the first things Caleb noticed about him, along with the precision of his casting. He’s seen Essek’s hands do many other things, now: pull impossible magic from the void, press against his blood spilling from his side, hover tentatively over Jester’s shoulders, linger against Caleb’s own skin. 

He strokes the inside of Essek’s palm, lets his outstretched index wander to the smooth pearl buttons at his wrist.

“Mm. Apology accepted. By the way, I don’t think you realize how many clichés you’re playing into right now,” Essek says. His voice is thick, sweet. Not unaffected by those clichés, then.

“Let me guess. I don’t have Jester’s encyclopedic knowledge of romantic fiction, but I’m going to go for the Empire barbarian stripping an exceedingly correct nobleman of the Queen’s court of his gloves and his spotless virtue?”

Essek laughs again.

“Not a barbarian, I think. A daring adventurer, perhaps, his cloak still smelling of smoke and ozone, bare-handed and unafraid of the strictures of Kryn court.”

Caleb can’t help but grin, wry. Even at the beginning of their acquaintance, what they were to each other was never so simple, their tenuous interest tied up in the politics and plots of war and empire.

This is playing at something that they could never be, for better or for worse. They are what they are: a schoolmaster with ash falling from his hands, and a drow in exile with blood that lingers still under his beautifully manicured nails. They know each other far too well to pretend, but play: that, perhaps, they can do.

Caleb nudges one of the buttons at his wrist, guiding it through its closure. He slips his thumb through the gap to lie against the warmth of Essek’s skin, his thrumming pulse. He glances up at Essek. His lips are parted, his gaze heavy. His eyelashes dip against his cheeks, white against night-sky dark.

Essek lets his sleeve fall back, layers of fine silk pooling around his arm. The graceful fall of Essek’s wrist exposes a stripe of sheer fabric running along the inside of his arm. It would be invisible to most, hidden below the fluttering layers of Kryn court garb. There is something beautifully obscene about it. Caleb may not hold the same associations with this clothing as Essek, but he can appreciate it all the same.

He runs his thumb over the spur of Essek's wrist and undoes the rest of the buttons, one by one, then turns his mouth against the inside of Essek’s wrist, his breath hot against the veins and tendons sitting so close to the surface. His skin still smells faintly of bergamot. Caleb knows that he’ll find the same scent clinging to the hollow below his ear.

Essek gives a full-body shudder. His wrist lies quiescent in Caleb’s hands, his fingers loosely curled. 

Caleb takes the glove by the tips of the fingers, glancing up at Essek. At Essek's nod, he slips the glove from Essek’s outstretched arm. The fine silk draws a shiver from Essek's skin that Caleb follows with his mouth. 

Essek’s finely-made hands are more battered than when Caleb first knew him, when they were the hands of a Kryn researcher and courtier. They are all the more beautiful for it. He can spot the small scars of living in his skin: the small alchemical burns from his work with Veth, a minute indentation from a run-in with Sprinkle, a deep slash across the tendons that almost robbed him of their function. Essek’s hands ache in the cold, sometimes: for all that Caduceus and Jester are skilled healers, the body remembers.

He presses his lips to Essek’s knuckles: a more open-mouthed, heated kiss than would be appropriate anywhere. Essek’s fingers tighten around his. 

Caleb turns his gaze up towards him. Essek's lips are parted, his eyes dark. He is still dressed so exactingly proper. There are only the diaphanous layers of his sleeve falling around his elbow and the bare skin of his hand to interrupt his careful poise, and it is all the more affecting for it. 

He turns Essek’s palm and finds the cup of his hand catching the light of the driftglobe, a glance of gold against the deep violet of his palm. It is a lambent gleam against the half-dark of their study, a sun in the small of his hand.

“Ah, what is this?”

Essek looks briefly torn, catching his lip in his teeth. Not standard wear for a business meeting, then.

“An old courting custom,” Essek says at last, wry. “It’s usually meant for a younger drow than I.”

Caleb thinks he sees embarrassment tighten Essek's shoulders. He doesn’t have the full context for this gesture, but he knows that the shining gold in his palm takes his breath from his lungs. He thinks of Essek dressing himself with the hope of Caleb baring his hands afterwards.

“It’s beautiful,” Caleb says. 

“I’m glad you think so.” Essek shifts his hand in Caleb’s loose hold, letting the light play over the golden skin. “I never—I never had the chance to wear it as it was intended, not without another motive for enticing someone.” 

Essek's voice changes to something consciously arch, a little wry. “I wouldn’t expect a foreign human to understand what this would mean at court. It would be a scandal for my umavi to learn that I am baring my hands for you.”

That play, again: this pretending at a simpler story for the both of them, one where these flirtatious games of courtesy would have been the most complicated part of their acquaintance. One where Essek was not excommunicated and severed from his den, perhaps one where they met unsullied and unbroken. It would never have been, but Caleb steps into his role easily enough. Essek appears to want this lightness, the chance to live this custom under their own terms.

The tips of Essek’s still-gloved fingers scrape against the rough of Caleb’s beard, catching at the smooth silk. Caleb smiles into his skin. Even now, Essek still has a fascination for his facial hair. Caleb wonders if he is thinking of the plum-dark flush that his beard brings to the inside of his thighs.

“Ah, I see. Would you still find me enticing, if I were not a foreign human?” He means it to come out teasing.

Essek stills. “Yes.” 

They have talked before of the spell that they crafted together, they and Veth. Of the possibility of having a few decades more to share, perhaps, if Caleb's lifespan were not so limited. It is a conversation that they will continue another time, when Caleb is not distracted by Essek's bared skin. Caleb presses his lips to the inside of Essek's elbow in apology for weighing down the lightness of the moment.

“I am honoured by your confidence, Herr Theylss,” Caleb says. “I assure you of my discretion.”

Essek grins at him shakily. It makes him look young, unburdened, and very beautiful.

“I think it is not only discretion I want from you,” Essek says. 

“Ah, what then?”

Caleb strokes his thumb over the hollow of Essek’s palm. The warmth of his skin loosens the gold pigment, transferring it to the pad of his thumb. 

Caleb takes Essek’s hand. He meets Essek’s gaze, draws Essek’s hand over his lips, his cheek, and down his throat, lets himself be marked by his touch. Essek draws a breath in, blinking quickly. 

“I—ah, that is—”

Caleb grins back at him. 

Essek visibly gathers himself. He touches his gloved hand to Caleb’s mouth. The silk is sleek and soft, and Caleb lets his lips part around the tips of his fingers. 

“I would have this light on your skin, too. I would have you take me to bed.” Essek pauses. “I would have you check that Jester is on call for our students, and that there will well and truly be no interruptions.”

Caleb laughs.

Essek steadies him when he stands. His knees are not what they used to be. He gestures for the house wards with one hand and reaches for Essek with the other. 

Their fingers twine, gold in the space between them.

**Author's Note:**

> me: oh man I really want to explore how deliciously complicated caleb and essek's relationship is right now and the conversations that they will never have and the yearning and the danger they think they pose to each other and  
> me: /writes extremely domestic handkink fic instead.  
> me: ok  
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
